The 700R4 in my 86 camaro now is toast, found another one (an 86 by coincidence) with unknown mileage that still shifts good and works as it should. I'm going to change the filter and would like some sort of shift kit as well. I know everyone on here like to push the probuilt place, but don't have $160 available for a kit. I was thinking of the picking up a corvette servo off of summit for $25. Also looking into the transgo Jr kit. Anyone have better recommendations? Not looking for anything that will give me neck pains, just a little upgrade. Oh, and the car is running a carb'd 350 and will use a stock torque converter.

vette servo, you can get anywhere

a B&M or TCI shift kit is about $70, and anything is better than the slushbox factory setup, i cant say either way on TCI or B&M, my shift kit is custom made

but putting a used 700 in is like the dog taking a crap on the carpet and you just throw a paper over it, yea it hides the problem, but its still there and it stinks, i would really rather you get a full rebuild, but i know how money can be tight, just dont expect a fluid change and shift kit to get you 70,000 miles, but if its all you can afford is to do that than go with it, just put a HIGH quality trans fluid in it, i would also dump one bottle of lucas trans fix in it for saftey mesures

i just broke something major in my 700 and it was fully built and built strong, fixin to see what happend but it has my trans man stumped, that thing should not have broke at all especialy with 8k on the rebuild..... something went totaly wrong, but he is taking care of it, nice to have a trustworthy trans guy that really knows what he is doing, this guy does not have trans break

If this new tranny shifts and runs fine, I wouldn't do anything to it!

Often, specs of worn clutches are present in the transmission fluid - it acts as a agent against slippage. Alot of times, if the fluid is changed, then you just flushed out the agent, and the tranny will slip. Unless you know for sure that the tranny has had fluid and filter changes on a regular basis (which is never the case), I wouldn't touch it. I'd run it until such time as I could have my original tranny rebuilt and built strong, and add the servos, shift kits, etc. to it, then reswap and sell the other one to help cover the cost of the rebuild.

Probably what I will end up doing. The plan is to save cash to have the original tranny rebuilt. Good idea to follow the old "if it aint broke, don't fix it".

this is ironic, as im doing the same EXACT thing with my 87's 700R4, swapping in a working 700R4, driving on that one while i rebuild my toasted one. My question is this, can i reuse my torque converter on the temp tranny? the fluid in my current tranny is toasted. Will this affect my current torque converter? It just needs to hang in there for about 500 miles. then its right back out.